Today's Bridge: A good, competitive day. The opponents started with a 3NT, off two, then rallied with a slam in spades, with an overtrick when the king of trump fell singleton. But we struck back with a thoroughly interesting 3NT Dbl that I'll get into later, followed by a partscore, and then what was intended to be a sacrifice. I had S x H A-Q-x-x-x D x-x C A-Q-x-x-x, so over Ken's 1D, I bid 1H. Dan H. bid 2D, Jerry passed, and Ken bid 3D. I figured it was worth bidding 4C and letting Jerry choose the suit, and they let me have it. Kevin, who was watching Jerry's hand, said "Merry Christmas" as he laid down S x-x H K-x-x D Q-x C K-J-x-x-x-x - when there wasn't an early heart ruff, I could claim easily. Unfortunately, the second rubber was a pair of sacrifices, 4S that just didn't work out and a 3C pre-empt with terrible splits and no good contract for the opponents anyway. But the 3NT - I had S Q-J-9-x-x H A-10-x D K-x C 9-x-x, and with favorable vulnerability, I figured it was worth stretching a 1S opening bid. Jerry responded with a jump to 3C, and I had nothing more useful to say than 3NT. He probably should have rebid the clubs with his H K-x D Q-x-x-x C K-Q-J-8-x-x-x, but we'd have a hard time making 5C with two aces to lose and little chance of getting two diamond ruffs, especially with the probable overruff with the ten. Ken doubled the contract, and Jerry still let me go for it. The opening heart lead was the only possible threat, so I took in hand (capturing Ken's queen) and led a club, losing to Ken's ace. What he needs to do now is lead a heart to knock out my remaining stopper (if I have the jack, the contract's unstoppable, and I have to have the king of diamonds for my opening bid), and when I try to set up a diamond for my ninth trick, he takes the ace, cashes the top two spades, and leads a heart to Dan's jack. Instead, he was afraid of letting me get to the clubs even though there were only six left and I still needed one more trick, so he cashed the top two spades and exited with a third. I took the jack and figured it was safe enough to lead a diamond to the queen, since I had to lose one more anyway. Ken took the ace, but could no longer stop me from getting the clubs, the last heart, and the last diamond. Of course, there was an overtrick in it once Ken had led the third spade, since I could throw the board's last diamond on my remaining top spade and then cross to the king of hearts, but oh well. It was only a hundred point mistake.

Today's Work: I spent the entire day researching git clients for Windows. There are some good-looking ones, so I'm hoping to have a computer tomorrow that I can download them onto and try them out. A lot will also depend on whether they're on the approved application list, but I'm sure that at least one must be. Otherwise, we get to choose which one to request.

I called the HOA today to ask about the letter I got. They said that the accusation of trash around my porch was a mistake, and that they'll take responsibility for painting the front door where I removed the storm door. And having removed the storm door, there was a big storm tonight with a tornado warning or two that Weatherbug never even alerted me to. Great timing!

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Yes, I'm THAT Nidoking. Sometimes I write fanfiction... often I waste all my time playing video games and watching anime. But it's not a waste if I enjoy it, right? I can quote from a movie, video game, anime series, or British comedy apropos of just about any situation, and one of my main goals in life is to entertain people. (The other big one is amassing as much anime and manga as I can... see below for a progress report.) That's me in a nutshell. ("Help! I'm trapped in a nutshell! What a bloody great nutshell this is!")